


One Line

by thefairfleming



Series: One Line [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-29
Updated: 2013-05-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 09:00:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/660170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefairfleming/pseuds/thefairfleming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's made so many mistakes, but she never thought her marriage was one of them. How could it be when it had all felt so right in the beginning? The moment Jon Snow had first slipped a hand in hers, she had known that this, this was the man she had been waiting for. The one promised her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Beginning of an actual series with chapters and plot and what have you! Result of a discussion that basically began with, "So I can see why Jon and Dany would be into one another, but when you think about it, they're...weirdly ill-suited? How would that even WORK?" Like this, maybe. ;) Title taken from P.J. Harvey's "One Line."

She's made so many mistakes, but she never thought her marriage was one of them. How could it be when it had all felt so right in the beginning? The moment Jon Snow had first slipped a hand in hers, she had known that this, _this_ was the man she had been waiting for. The one promised her.

               The argument started the way they always do, over a matter than should not have required an argument at all. And yet here they are once again, the air in their chambers thick with anger and resentment, and Daenerys feels a steady ache behind her eyes. But she will not weep, not this time. Instead, she stands by the fire, drawing strength from it, trying to remember those first few heady months together when it seemed as though everything had finally fallen into place.

               "I dreamed of you, you know." The words sound dreamy themselves, and she thinks she is speaking them more for herself than for him. "In the House of the Undying, they showed me a blue rose in a wall of ice. It smelled so sweet, and I knew...,"

               From behind her, Jon gives a sigh that sounds so much older than his years, and Daenerys closes her eyes. 

               Of course. He hates when she speaks of dreams or prophecies. Not that he's ever said so in as many words, but then he's never had to. The crease that appears between this eyes, the hardening of his jaw, those sighs...they tell her all she needs to know. Her husband may have Targaryen blood, but he is a Northman- a _Stark_ \- to his core, practical and serious and distrusting of anything  he cannot see with his own eyes, touch with his own hands. She had loved that about him once, much as she thinks he had loved her for her unshakable belief in her destiny. 

               In _their_ destiny. 

               Strange that in the course of only a few years, differences that had once seemed so charming, so endearing, should now form a wall between them nearly as impenetrable and icy as the one Jon had once defended. 

               "Are you that unhappy here, Jon?" she asks, opening her eyes to stare into the flames. 

               "I've told you," he says, his voice tight. "My wanting to go North has nothing to do with you. I haven't seen Winterfell since the war ended. I owe it to Sansa to pay my respects."

               Daenerys's grip tightens on the mantle, but she still does not turn around to face him. "Then, as I've told _you_ , go under my banners, with all the honors-,"

               "I'm not storming into her bloody home with a damned army at my back."

               She does turn then. Jon still sits in his chair, elbows braced on his spread thighs, hands clasped tight in front of him. He does not shout, but then he rarely raises his voice when they argue. How she wishes he would. Sometimes when they fight, she feels like a madwoman, shrieking and raving, while Jon sits there locked inside himself, the expression on his face often closer to confusion and sadness than rage. "It's your home," she reminds him. "The girl you called sister sits as Warden in the North only because you asked for it, and I agreed to it." 

               Jon's jaw tightens, and Daenerys lifts her chin, feeling something like triumph coursing through her veins, hot and sweet as the wine she had with supper. "I realize you hate being my consort, Jon, but protocol demands you at least act like a prince from time to time."

               At that, he rises from his chair, and for one moment, she thinks he means to leave. Anger and frustration roll off of him in waves,  and she sees the slight tremor in his hand when rubs his mouth. "I do not hate being your consort, but being your consort does not mean I have to cower behind soldiers and banners and charlatans every time I set foot out the door like-,"

               "Like I do?" she challenges, stepping closer to him. "Is that what you mean to say?"

               Jon does not reply, merely looking into her eyes, with that unreadable expression she's grown to hate, and when the silence between them lengthens, she reaches out to shove at his chest. "Answer me!"

               He catches her wrist easily, holding her with a grip that's somehow gentle and firm all at once, and Daenerys has a sudden memory of him moving above her, inside of her, his hands pinning both of her wrists over her head in a similar manner _("Have you captured me then, my prince?" she teased, and he laughed, the sound rumbling through his body and into hers. "As if I ever could, my queen."_ )

               Perhaps he remembers that night, too, for his gaze drops to her lips, his eyes darkening. This, at least, is the one thing that has not gone wrong between them. She may no longer understand her husband, but she still wants him.  

               "Not everything I say is a slight against you." Jon's voice is low, gruff. "It's simply that if I'm going to return to Winterfell, I'd like to do so as myself, not as... an extension of the throne."

               "What you _want_ ," she spits out, "is to be a Stark again rather than a Targaryen." 

               _Rather than mine._

               His grip on her wrist tightens. "I am a Stark, Daenerys."

               It's the same argument, the one she feels they always have, the one she sometimes fears they will never be able to resolve. 

               The one that leaves her feeling as though they speak different languages. 

               If she were merely a woman and not a queen, she might weep. She might beg him not to leave, might admit that she fears his journey North is not a pilgrimage to pay respects, but a flight from her. 

               Instead, she meets his gaze asks, "So you still see yourself as part of the same family that murdered my own? That drove me into exile for years? That-,"

               "That was the Baratheons and the Lannisters," Jon replies, dropping her wrist. His lips twist in a scowl, one she's seen on his face too many times. "My father-,"

               " _He was not your father_!" Her words seem to echo off the stone walls, and she knows their guards outside have heard her. But then this would hardly be the first time they've heard angry words in the royal bedchamber, and Daenerys presses on. "Your father was murdered by the same man Ned Stark put on the throne. "

               She had sworn that she wouldn't weep, but tears come now, stinging her eyes, spilling down her cheeks as hot and angry as her words. "You cannot be my consort _and_ my enemy."

               Perhaps it's her tears, or the way her voice shakes when she says it, but Jon makes a helpless sound, closing the space between them. His hands cup her face. "I am not your enemy." 

               He sounds broken, and as his thumbs chase the tears from her jaw, and Daenerys gives a shuddering sigh, leaning into him.

               This argument began like all the others, and so it ends like all the others as well, with a hungry meeting of lips and tongues, with Jon's hand on the back of her neck, her fingers twisted in the front of his shirt. Nothing has been resolved, nothing decided, but none of that matters when he's kissing her like this, his mouth moving from her lips to her jaw, to the soft skin below her ear. When they are like this, it is easier to remember that they belong to one another. That for all their differences, she is his and he is hers, and this is right, it should be, it _must_ be.

               He would lead her back to their bed, she knows, would take his time, would use his mouth on her until she cannot breathe, but she doesn't want that. She only wants _him_ , now, feeling as desperate and unraveled as she does. When her teeth nip at his lower lip, Jon sucks in a harsh breath, but the hand he has on the back of her neck squeezes tighter, and Daenerys pushes him backward until his calves bump into the chair by the fire. He sits down heavily, pulling her with him, and then it's a simple matter of undoing his laces and shoving her skirts out of the way. 

               She is already wet, has been since the moment he touched her face, and Jon groans as he slides inside of her. " _Dany_."

               The first night they'd made love, there in his tent in the freezing cold north of the Wall, he had said her name like that, said it over and over again as his hands and mouth had learned every part of her. She'd moved over him, looking into his eyes and known that from then on, nothing would be the same.

               She moves over him now, but her eyes are closed and his face is buried in the crook of her shoulder.  The pleasure is as intense and shattering as it always is, and when Jon snakes a hand under her skirts to brush against the place where they're joined, she comes apart almost immediately, panting and gripping the back of the chair, her hips rolling against his fingers. Jon follows only seconds later, surging up into her with a hoarse cry. 

               They sit there for a long time afterward, until the sweat has cooled on their bodies and their hearts no longer hammer against one another.

               He will go North, she knows. And he will go as Jon Snow, bastard son of Winterfell rather than Jon Targaryen, Prince Consort. He is the only home she has managed to make for herself, but there is another place, another family, he can call home, and Daenerys is not sure if what she feels is pain or envy. 

               She thinks of the red door in Braavos and wonders if it is not both. 

               The fire is nearly embers before Daenerys says, "Are you going to come back from Winterfell?"

               His hand, absently stroking her back, stills. "Of course I am," he says, his voice low in her ear. 

               Daenerys keeps her gaze on the glowing embers even as she tucks herself closer to him. "And will you come back for me or because it's your duty?"

               That he does not answer.  
                


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon makes his way North.

                 Jon nearly turns back half a hundred times. 

               It isn't that he doesn't wish to see Winterfell and Sansa again. It's that with every mile, his wife's words echo in his head, a steady litany of accusation and hurt. She thinks he will not return from the North, and if he is honest, there is a part of Jon that longs to turn his back on King's Landing and never look back.

               He thinks his men sense it. He only took a handful with him (causing yet another argument between him and Daenerys), and only the men who had known him on the Wall. Pyp, Grenn, Satin, and of course, Sam. 

               It is Sam's gaze he feels mostly heavily as they sit around the fire at night.

               Sam has often known Jon's heart more clearly than Jon himself, and Jon suspects that is the case now. Especially when, after a fortnight when Sam hands Jon a mug of ale and says, "I could go on to Winterfell and pay your respects, Your Grace. Let you get back to the palace and-and the Queen."

               Jon's fingers flex around the mug, and he nearly acquiesces. This is a fool's errand, and over and over again, he has heard Dany's voice, reminding him that they can never look back. 

               And Sam would adore Sansa, Jon thinks. Likewise, Sansa would undoubtedly take to Sam. She had always loved soft words and pretty manners, and surely Sam would shower both upon her.

               But then Jon remembers that he has not seen Sansa in near a decade. He has no idea what she likes anymore, and she is no longer a girl, giggling at songs. She is a widow, a mother, the Lady of Winterfell and Warden of the North.

               And she is the only family, save his wife, that Jon has left.

               So he give Sam a rueful smile and shakes his head. "Afraid this is something I must do myself," he says, clapping a hand on the maester's shoulder. He moves to go past Sam and into his tent, but Sam catches his hand, presses it in place. Jon can see that his friend struggles with what to say. Finally, Sam merely squeezes Jon's hand and says, "Forgot how cold it is this far north."

               Jon only laughs. "The palace has made you soft, Sam."

               Sam give a laugh of his own and an easy shrug. "No, I was always soft."

               Shaking his head again, Jon makes for his tent, but as he settles into his furs, furs that still smell of King's Landing, he thinks of the sadness in Sam's eyes, the worry.

               ***

               He dreams of her every night.

               There's an irony in it, Jon realizes. Whenever Daenerys speaks of dreams and prophecies, he's quick to dismiss them. He knows that it hurts her when he does, but Jon has always wished that she would give herself credit for all that she's done rather than call it fate or destiny. _She_ is the one who crossed the Narrow Sea on her dragons, who brought an end to the Others, who reclaimed the throne of her forebears, but she puts her faith in insubstantial fancies.

               Sometimes, when Jon looks into her eyes, he feels like an insubstantial fancy himself. He is meant to be her consort, he knows. She speaks so often of all the times this warlock or that charlatan showed him to her, and Jon knows that she means for him to feel awed at the forces that have brought them together.

               But all he ever feels is sad. Daenerys looks at him and expects something more than he is, something more than he could ever be, and Jon finds that her disappointment in him is exhausting and frustrating. _Why are you here?_ he sometimes imagines her thinking. _I was promised a prince, but all the gods gave me was a bastard boy from the North who seems intent on running away._

               Such thoughts don't keep him from aching for her on the long road north. In his dreams, it is like the early days of their marriage again, those days when he felt drunk on her, when every moment he wasn't with her was wasted, pointless. She laughs in those dreams, that low, throaty laugh that even now leaves him weak-kneed and longing.

               Every morning he awakes with the feel of her in his arms, the taste of her on his lips. The mornings are always the times he's most tempted to abandon this quest and return to her.

               But the further north they go, the easier Jon breathes. Ghost senses it, too, and the closer they get to Winterfell, the more often Ghost vanishes for days at a time, disappearing into the thick woods lining the road. It makes Jon glad to see it. Like Jon himself, the direwolf never seemed to fit in King's Landing, and Jon had had to comfort more than one shrieking scullery maid as Ghost tore through the kitchens, or appeared out in the gardens. 

               Daenerys has never much cared for Ghost, and the feeling seems mutual. Not that Ghost has ever snapped or snarled at her- Jon is not sure what he would do should such a thing ever occur- but the beast has always kept his distance from the queen. 

               "It's the dragons," Jon told her once when Ghost had shied away from Dany's touch. "He doesn't like the smell of them on you."  
               But Daenerys had only frowned and moved further away. 

               Some nights when Ghost doesn't return, Jon wonders if the direwolf might stay in the North when he returns to King's Landing. The thought makes his chest tighten, even as he admits that Ghost would probably be happier at Winterfell than he's been at the Red Keep. Lying on his furs, studying the ceiling of his tent, Jon remembers that Sansa's own wolf, Lady, died on this very road, heading in the opposite direction, and as much as it pains him to think of losing Ghost, a part of him likes the idea of Ghost at Sansa's side. She's the last Stark left, Warden of the North. Surely, a direwolf belongs at her side.

               But two nights later when Ghost comes loping back out of the trees, Jon is so glad to see him that the idea of leaving him behind seems foolish and impossible. Even if he wanted to, he could not give Ghost to Sansa like a shy boy offering a girl a trinket, and a direwolf cannot make up for all that she has lost.

                ***

               At the first sight of Winterfell's towers, something in Jon breaks and heals all at the same time.

               He has not been to Winterfell since the day he left for the Wall, a boy so sure of where he was going, of where he was from. In his mind, he had been like his uncle, destined to become a Ranger, to come back and see his family every few years. He had imagined Robb's sons running out to greet him the way he and Robb had always run to Benjen. He would teach them to fight- for all his skills, Robb had never been the swordsman Jon was- and he would become a great, heroic figure to the young heirs of Winterfell. A man of the Night's Watch, a bastard son who had done his father proud.

               But those had been a boy's dreams, and Robb would father no sons. There would be no smiling boys with auburn curls running to the gates when Jon arrived. Sansa had children, he knew, but girls. And he could not be sure of how he would be received once he got to Winterfell. Of all his siblings, Sansa was the one he knew the least, the one he felt less sure calling "sister," no matter the truth of his parentage. 

               On the march south from the ruins of the Wall, he and Dany's army had camped within sight of Winterfell's walls. It had been empty then, the Boltons driven out, but Sansa not yet returned from the Vale to claim it. 

               It had shamed him, giving the order to camp so close to Winterfell but not within the keep itself. But he had looked at blackened stone, the ruined towers, and everything in him curdled at the idea of walking back through the gates, knowing that no one he had loved was there. 

               Still, that night, sleep had eluded him and he had freed himself from Dany's arms, walking out of their tent and standing on the slight rise overlooking the castle. He was dressed only in breeches, and the night air had bitten into his skin, but he'd welcomed the cold. Welcomed any pain that distracted him from the thudding of his heart, the tightness in his chest, the roiling in his stomach as he took in what remained of Winterfell.

               Jon had not even known Daenerys was there until he felt her hand on his sternum, the press of her breasts against his back. Despite the cold, she was bare, and Jon had leaned back into her, taking comfort as he always did in the never-ending warmth of her. His dragon queen, who had brought fire back to his blood. 

               "You mustn't look back, Jon," she had whispered. " _We_ mustn't. Not ever."

               And there in that moment, staring down at all that was left of his home, he had seen the wisdom in that. All that he and Daenerys had been before was burned clean away. They were only themselves, now, and Jon never wanted to look back again.

               He had turned in her arms and carried her down to the ground, kissed her and touched her and made love to her under the cold light of the moon, and when had had shuddered and spent in her arms, it had been easy to believe that he'd never been the bastard son of Winterfell at all. That he'd been born the moment he met her.

               But now, riding up to the gates that show signs of repair, seeing the bright yellow of new wood in Winterfell's towers, Jon remembers.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He is gone for over half a year.

He is gone for over half a year.

               At first, Daenerys is not sure what she feels. She spends nights in the enormous bed they share, and her loneliness and longing feel like a weight on her chest, a hollowness in her stomach. No matter how bad their quarrels had been, she and Jon had always slept pressed against one another, her head pillowed on his chest, or his arms wrapped around her from behind, his breath warm on her neck. Jon had laughed about it once, the way they huddled together despite having a veritable ocean of mattress. Daenerys remembers brushing the hair off his face and burrowing deeper into his embrace, thinking that perhaps both of them had spent too many nights alone to ever wish to keep to their own sides of the bed.

               But there is another part of her, one that is relieved to be free of Jon's baleful looks, of those heavy sighs, the nights when their chambers ring with anger and tension. She breathes easier without him there, never worried that some new decision or some stray word will make his brow crease, his jaw tighten.

               Still, when she comes out of a particularly stressful small council meeting, she thinks of other meetings, other moments when her crown felt like the heaviest thing in the world, and the way Jon would put his hands on her shoulders and kiss the top of her head. When she remembers moments like that, he is suddenly all she wants, no matter that they can never seem to agree on anything these days.

`              It is no wonder they cannot sort themselves out. Daenerys feels as though she's a tangled knot of contradictory feelings all her own, and she wonders if Jon is feeling something similar there in the North.

               His ravens come consistently, but they are official documents, commenting on the rebuilding of Winterfell, the concerns facing Sansa as Warden in the North. That's as it should be, and Daenerys would expect nothing less from Jon. Still, she wishes for some sort of personal communication from him, and as the months stretch on, her loneliness turns to frustration and a dangerous sort of restlessness, one that leaves her feeling as though her skin is too tight.  She snaps at servants, loses patience with her small council, and spends more time than usual with her dragons. They seem to sense her mood, pacing in the huge enclosure she had built for them, and a part of her wishes to climb onto Drogon, to fly far away from King's Landing. Perhaps she will fly North, landing atop the place Jon still seems to consider home. The place that, it now seems, he has fled to, perhaps for good.

               "You married in war, Khaleesi," Irri tells her one night, after Jon has been gone for nearly four months. The maid shrugs slightly as she says it, as though that one statement explains everything.

               They sit in the royal bed, a bottle of wine tucked between Dany's knees. She knows it is perhaps unbefitting a queen to sit thus with a servant, but Irri stopped being merely a servant years ago, and Daenerys finds she no longer cares what is queenly and what is not.

               "What do you mean?" she asks, tipping the bottle to her lips.

               "Love in war? Easy," Irri tells her. "Blood high, nothing certain, nothing known. Every time you fuck may be last time you fuck." She took the bottle from Daenerys and gave another one of those shrugs. "Easy."

               Dany considers that. "And you think that's what happened to me and Jon? That we only wed...that we only thought we loved each other because everything was so dire."

               Irri swallows her wine and smiles. "Yes and no, Khaleesi. You and Jon Snow, you love. That is real. That is _known_. But you do not know _how_ to love each other yet."

               They both drink too much, and Irri ends up falling asleep there in Dany's bed, her head resting on her queen's shoulder. A part of Daenerys is oddly disappointed. It would be nice, she thinks, to have hands on her body. To be touched with desire.

               Slipping an arm around Irri's shoulders, she pulls the girl closer to her and drifts off to sleep, dreaming of Jon still standing on the Wall before it fell, his gaze turned North.

              

                ***

               Taking the Braavosi ambassador to her bed is the height of folly.

               She's not even sure why she does it, really. True, he's handsome in a soft, slightly feminine way, and she likes how blue his eyes are. She also likes the way he looks at her, full of warmth and uncomplicated want.

`              And there has not been a raven from Jon in over a month.

               In her bed ( _their bed, the bed she shares with Jon, the bed in which she has laid next to her husband for so many nights_ ), the ambassador's hands are rough and needy, his teeth grazing her neck, his breath hot in her ear. It's good in a simple, animal way, but she's still surprised to find herself arching against him, crying out as pleasure breaks over her. There had been a part of her sure that Jon had ruined her for other men, but it seems that's not the case, and Daenerys isn't sure if she feels relieved or saddened.

               She doesn't let the man stay, of course, and she makes sure that he has a very clear idea what will happen to him should he ever brag of enjoying the Queen's favors. And after he leaves, she spends the rest of the night wrapped in a dressing gown that is too large for her, sitting by the fire and trying to compose a message for Jon. She writes several drafts, each one different from the last and each consigned to the flames before she signs it. In one, she tells him of her loneliness, of the emptiness of their bed and of her heart, how she wakes in the middle of the night from dreams of him, and how for all that they have torn and scratched and bitten at one another, she needs him, wants him, loves him, and longs for him to come home to her.

               Another is angry, accusatory, full of words sharper than a dragon's tooth, asking why there has been no raven from him, reminding him that he had sworn to come back to King's Landing, had he forgotten his honor so entirely?

               Then there's a message that is a mix of the two, both sad and angry, full of love and rage in equal measure. She tells Jon what Irri said, that they don't know _how_ to love one another, tells him how life is somehow easier and harder all at once without him. She doesn't tell him that she has cuckolded him, but she imagines that he'd be able to somehow know, that her guilt must seep from every word.

                The letter is a mess of emotions, and Daenerys does not realize she's crying until tears fall to the page, smearing the ink.

               With a frustrated sound, she balls up the parchment, throwing it into the fire with the other two.

               For long, long moments, she sits in her dressing gown, head in her hands, her tears dripping onto the brocade. She wore this robe for Jon once, and she remembers now the way he had slowly undone the belt at her waist, the warmth in his eyes- the love, he _loves_ her, she knows he does- as he'd pushed the fabric from her shoulders, the way he'd breathed against her neck, how warm his hand had felt pressed against her lower back. Things had been good between them once, so good, and she has no idea how they can get back to that place.

               _If_ they can.

               But she knows now that this has gone on long enough. Daenerys raises her head, swiping her hands over her cheeks and taking a deep breath. She returns to her ink and parchment, and for a moment, she considers writing a simple missive.

               _Come home._

               _I miss you._

_I need you._

               Instead, she takes the desire of a wife for her husband and turns it into a command from a queen, informing him that his presence is required in King's Landing and that his duties call to him. She closes the message with her official signature rather than her name, and as she stares at the words, as cold and icy as the North itself, Daenerys nearly throws this one into the fire as well.

               But she calls for a servant before she can second guess herself further, telling him that she wants several copies made, that no fewer than a score of ravens are to go North with this missive.

               If the servant thinks it's strange that his queen would make such a request in the dark hour just before dawn, he gives no sign, merely bowing and taking the parchment from her with a murmured, "Your Grace."

               Once he is gone, Daenerys turns back to her bed. As she crawls between the sheets, she does her best to ignore the scent of the ambassador's perfumed hair, still lingering on the linen.

               The bed still feel empty and vast. Dany turns her head to the spot where Jon usually sleeps, her fingers skating along his pillow and wonders what she will do when he obeys her command.

               And what she will do if he does not. 


End file.
